


When All Grows Dark

by Callmesalticidae



Series: There is Nothing to Fear [10]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Hogwarts House Sorting, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gryffindor Tom Riddle, Other, The Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26752945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmesalticidae/pseuds/Callmesalticidae
Summary: Peace has finally fallen at Spinner’s End. There is nothing to fear. (1981)
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Possible James Potter/Lily Evans/Severus Snape, Possible Lily Evans/Severus Snape
Series: There is Nothing to Fear [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1087368
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51





	When All Grows Dark

> Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.
> 
> Pierce Brown

Lily wasn’t sure when she’d stopped thinking of it as “Severus’ house.” _Where_ she’d stopped thinking like that was easier to figure out: the potions lab, which is where she and Severus had spent most of their time anyway. In the early days, before James arrived, they might well have pulled up a pair of cots and never left if it hadn’t been for Marlene spending the better part of three weeks mothering the two of them into decent habits. She was still doing more than her share of the cooking and washing-up.  
  
Lily had initially balked when Dumbledore assigned Marlene to Spinner’s End, for all that the two of them were friends, because she knew what Marlene had gotten for her Potions OWL, and there wasn’t a point, was there, to brewing for the Aurora Aureum if the result might kill as easily as cure. It wasn’t till Week Two, which at the time she’d thought was still Week One, that she realized she and Severus had possibly been working themselves into early graves.  
  
At that point, Lily was pretty sure, she was thinking of the house in terms of the lab and everything that wasn’t the lab. Then James had come into the picture, and like hell was Lily going to let Marlene take another item of responsibility when she was overworked as it was. Neither was she going to inflict Severus and James on each other—one was her friend and the other, well, no dying man deserved _that_.  
  
Some time after that, some time after all the “good mornings” had transformed into ‘I love yous,’ and the ‘how are you feeling todays’ had become impassioned kisses and and ‘the poor sick bloke in the bed’ had become ‘the father of my child,’ some time around all that, probably, was when she started thinking of Spinner’s End as “Home.” And of course Severus was the godfather. Of course.  
  
Today was a break day, which meant no awkward Harry-juggling in order to manage the problem that one adult in this house already had enough to do, another was barely capable of keeping himself alive without supervision, and the other two were responsible for most of the Aurora’s potions. The wireless had been on all day, since you could answer _Quizzarding World_ questions whether or not your arms were full of baby, but then the station had gone to _The Tomorrow Program_ , and if there was one thing that everyone could all agree on, it was that divination was worth a steaming pile of shite.  
  
Though, there were a few other matters that could inspire their concord these days, actually. They were getting to the point, in fact, that Lily no longer felt she was tempting fate by acknowledging, at least in her head, that everyone was getting along.  
  
Chess was another field of agreement, for instance. James, it turned out, knew of a three-player variant, played on an hexagonal board with oddly-contorted spaces, and it had been simple enough to transfigure the right kind of board and a set of red pieces. The only tricky bit was figuring out how the knight was supposed to move whenever he strayed near the center, which looked mostly like a chess board but a little bit like the eye of an insomniac goblin.  
  
It took some getting used to, as well, that none of them could move quite as they wanted—if Black captured White, it couldn’t do so again until it had captured Red. Sometimes it was impossible to defend a piece, and sometimes even _trying_ would only put more pieces in danger. In those situations, she could only accept the inevitable loss and prepare for the time when she _could_ act.  
  
The first game of the evening was a confusing mess that Severus won by a hair, and they were just about near the end of the second when they were interrupted. The fireplace went green, and Dumbledore strode out, waving to them in greeting and patting down the sleeves of his robes, and somehow combining them into one motion.  
  
“James, Lily,” he said immediately, and then, “Where is your son?”  
  
“Napping,” Lily said, and something about the answer seemed to relax Dumbledore just a little, as though he were carrying a mountain, but somebody had knocked a few pebbles off the top.  
  
“I need to speak with you two, if you can spare the time.”  
  
James blinked. “Might be hard, but I’ll try to squeeze you in between ‘feverish hallucinations’ and my fifth trip to the water closet.” He coughed, and Lily tensed, but the moment passed and it failed to progress into anything worse. “Or, I guess, we could talk now.”  
  
“Excellent,” Dumbledore said. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I apologize for the failure to notify you ahead of time, but events are progressing rapidly and I may not have an opportunity to discuss this with you later. Severus, my boy, could you give us a moment?”  
  
“Severus,” James said intently, “can stay,” and Lily let go of a tension she didn’t realize she’d been holding.  
  
“Very well.” Dumbledore cleared the table of its chess pieces with a gesture, then retrieved something from inside his robes, flowing-falling from his hands like soft molten silver—the Potters’ Cloak. “There is something I need to show you. Something you deserve to know.” Dumbledore spread it gently across the table, smoothed out the wrinkles, and pointed to one corner of the Cloak. It took Lily a moment to understand what Dumbledore was referring to, so faded was the symbol: a triangle, a circle, and a line.  
  
“The Hallowsbrand,” she murmured.  
  
“But this could not possibly have been in Grindelwald’s possession,” Severus protested, and James nodded.  
  
“It’s an actual Hallow, isn’t it?” she whispered. Oh, it could have been a forgery or some kind of mockup, but the cloak had last through so many generations of James’ family—long enough that it was simply an heirloom, bereft of any story of its provenance—and all without losing its strength, as other cloaks did. It seemed unlikely, now that the question was posed, that someone else would make such a thing and then pass it off as someone else’s work.  
  
Dumbledore agreed, at any rate, and that was worth something in her books. “I trust you are all familiar with the story of the Peverells and what they won from Death. It is doubtful that there was any such contest in truth, but the accretion of myth does not lessen from the fact that the Hallows themselves exist. Or that their powers have tempted many.”  
  
It was James who spoke up next. “Riddle knew, didn’t he?” he said, voice quavering, and Dumbledore inclined his head with empathetic sorrow.  
  
“I believe that to be the case. That is, in fact, why we are having this conversation.” Dumbledore fell quiet, and the silence grew long and wide between them, like a great gulf, before he spoke and broke it. “The war is not going well. I have contingencies in place, and I have little doubt in our eventual victory, but this is a war that will be won by inches, not yards, and there may come a time when it is important that you understand what is at the heart of this.”  
  
It was a sobering declaration to hear, even if Dumbledore tried to soften it with that “little doubt” stuff, but then, this was Britain, Lily decided, and that would be enough. “We beat Hitler, didn’t we? And Riddle might have magic, but we’ve got magic, too. We’ll get him in the end.”  
  
Severus peered at her with curiosity, but said nothing, and then Dumbledore withdrew a photograph and placed it on the table. James scowled. Severus turned stony, as sure a tell as any who knew him as Lily did. She was unsure what emotion betrayed itself on her own face, but hoped that it was her anger, and not her worry.  
  
The photograph had been taken during a session of the Wizengamot, if the robes were any indication, but only Tom Riddle was in focus, lips moving and eyes to the side as if speaking with someone beyond the edge of the photograph. He cut a stark figure, lean and hard, and at first Lily’s eyes fell on the lion-headed torc that wreathed his neck, but Dumbledore directed their attention to a ring on Riddle’s hand, which bore the same Hallowsbrand as James’ cloak. As Lily studied the photograph, Riddle caught her gaze and returned it with a cold smile. His hand shifted position, and the ring which it bore was turned out of view.  
  
“This is an old photograph,” Dumbledore said. “I imagine he stopped wearing that ring openly around the time it no longer amused him to remind pure-blood society that the last heir of Salazar Slytherin was a half-blood. I am certain that it remains in his possession, however. It may even still be on his hand, enchanted so as to be concealed.”  
  
It was no wand, which meant… “That’s the Resurrection Stone,” Lily said.  
  
“Fifteen points to Gryffindor,” Dumbledore said, and she smiled briefly.  
  
“But Riddle doesn’t have anything like an army of inferi, not like it’s supposed that Grindelwald wanted to do—and I wouldn’t put it past Riddle to do such a thing if it were in his power. Which means that it can’t do that or he doesn’t know how to make it so.”  
  
“I am unsure what powers it possesses, though the thought that it might let us speak to the departed is...an attractive one,” Dumbledore said. “Nevertheless, I doubt that it permits anything so crude as the mass enchantment of inferi. Such a thing is not even hinted at in legends, for all that Grindelwald desired it so.”  
  
“Even if Riddle is only able to converse with shades, that is hardly a comfort,” said Severus. “It is disturbing to contemplate that the knowledge of Merlin and Virgilius might be in his hands. And if the dead cannot be forced, then there are still dark witches and wizards who would have no compunctions against sharing their lore with him.”  
  
James reached out his hand, and touched the photograph lightly with a finger. “Why are you telling us this?” His shoulders sagged, and Lily worried for a moment that they were heading into one of his bad days, when James was so weak that he seemed half-empty, but James seemed to rally himself and it appeared to pass. “You don’t expect us to _do_ something about this, not with me like this and the rest of this house cooped up unless they want a Memory Charm.”  
  
Dumbledore sighed. “I thought that you deserved to know, James. Especially with...your son. If you plan for him to inherit the Cloak, then you ought to know what that means, but even if you do not then you should still know why it was that I could not let Riddle know you had survived.”  
  
“Then why _now_?”  
  
Dumbledore was still for a moment. “The conduct of this conflict has not necessarily been to our advantage. Riddle is growing ever-bolder, and I fear he will soon act openly, so that his insurgency turns to civil war. If that happens, when that happens, I may ask something of you, and I may not have the opportunity to explain my reasons. It is my hope that you will remember our conversation today, remember what the stakes may be, and act thusly.”  
  
“If I’m still able to act,” James said.  
  
Lily flinched, but Dumbledore seemed imperturbable. “I did not ask to speak only with you,” he said.  
  
“There are three Hallows,” Lily said. “If Riddle has one, and thinks that the second is lost somewhere in the Kielder Forest, then he must be looking for the third. Do _we_ know what happened to it?”  
  
Dumbledore glanced at James. “It was once the tradition among Hogwarts graduates to embark on a Grand Tour of the world, or at least those parts of it that entranced them. Such things were no longer in vogue by the time that Riddle graduated, but he departed to foreign shores nevertheless. The war against Grindelwald had just concluded, and he believed it likely that the Elder Wand’s bearer would have been drawn to such a scene as surely as ravens circle a battlefield.”  
  
“Was he right?”  
  
“Given the facts he likely had at hand, I cannot fault his thinking. More, I cannot say, except that I do not believe he found the Elder Wand.”  
  
“Then who does?”  
  
“I can’t say. It need not exist anymore. If Britain were fortunate, its bearer would have snapped the thing a long time ago, but wands have a will of their own, and wizards have a talent for justifying the unjustifiable all on their own.”  
  
“That isn’t very reassuring.”  
  
“The truth rarely is,” Dumbledore replied, though Lily couldn’t shake the feeling that he was leaving out a crucial piece of information. Some lead on its current whereabouts, perhaps, though he was probably right to keep that from them.  
  
He shifted where he stood, as though readjusting the mountain that had settled on his shoulders, then continued: “I needn’t tell you to keep it secret, or safe. I have said as much in the past, and you would do so even if I hadn’t. You deserve to know all that I can tell you, however, and I hope that it is clear, now, why your existence has to remain hidden—why Harry’s parentage, too, must be kept under wraps until this affair is over.”  
  
It was, unfortunately. As long as Riddle thought his quest for the Deathly Hallows was secret, it would be easier to glean the purpose behind some of his actions. It might even be possible to manipulate him, Lily saw.  
  
But Riddle wasn’t stupid. If he knew that _others_ knew, then he’d account for that. The knowledge might not be entirely wasted—surely he wouldn’t stop wanting the Hallows so easily—but he would make an effort to obscure his purposes and he would not be so easily baited into a trap.  
  
“That may be a very long time,” Severus observed.  
  
“Needs must when the devil drives,” Dumbledore replied, and Lily raised her eyebrows at such a curiously mugglish phrase. A dark expression fell across Dumbledore’s face, and he stood from the table. “And he drives even now. I must take my leave. There are preparations to make for the coming school-year, and meetings with the Minister, and… Oh, James,” he said, and then, “Lily, Severus. I am so sorry for the burdens that I have put on your shoulders.”  
  
He folded the Cloak, pressed it into James’ hands, and departed through the Floo.  
  
That was the last time that Lily would see Dumbledore.

**Author's Note:**

> Quizzarding World comes from Taure's [Victoria Potter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13795605/chapters/31714617). The Tomorrow Program is a riff on The Today Program.
> 
> There are several three-player variants of chess. They're all a little odd.
> 
> The Hallows have been referenced before, but this is the first time in a while that they've gotten real attention. Suffice it to say, the lack of certainty regarding the Resurrection Stone is important, and I have Ideas.
> 
> Muggle historians will say that in Medieval folklore there were stories of “Virgilius the Sorcerer,” who was said to live in unspecified Roman times and was eventually confused with Virgil the poet, composer of the Aeneid. Witches and wizards know that there was no confusion—the poet Virgil was also a wizard, and a damned good one at that (it helps that they still have access to the “lost” biography written by Varius, his editor).


End file.
